During operation of clothes dryers, static electricity is created as a result of friction and it induces opposite electrical charges between the frictional pieces.
When clothes are dried in a rotary clothes dryer the tumbling action of the clothes causes enough friction between the clothes, and between the clothes and the drum's inner surface, to induce substantial charges of static electricity in the clothes, especially when synthetic fabrics are involved. More particularly, this electricity results when two specific types of materials, one having atoms which tend to part with electrons to adjacent atoms and the other having atoms which tend to remove electrons from adjacent atoms, are contacted or rubbed together. Such materials will take on opposite charges as friction causes electrons to be transferred from one material to the other. Static electricity is of opposite charges which attract each other, hence the clothes tend to stick to each other and this cling effect increases with friction. Another undesirable effect is that such static charge also attracts lint which clings to clothes.
The static charges are not known to be very harmful, but they are a noticeable problem and it is highly desirable to provide a means of neutralizing the static charges before the clothes are removed from the clothes dryer.